Donovan was just 16 years old when the romance started, just after her Australian Idol win. The singer says as an insecure, overweight teenager she was taken in fairly quickly.

“I wasn’t pretty. I was fat. I always said the wrong things and made a fool of myself," Donovan tells New Idea. “What on earth could he see in me?”

The telephone relationship began while she was touring in 2004 and quickly blossomed, but he always made excuses when she asked to meet him in real life.

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“He had to go to Queensland to look after his sick aunt, his car wasn’t working, his cousin died, his sister was pregnant,” writes Donovan in her book, Big, Beautiful and Sexy, listing just a few of the excuses he used.

Donovan writes that Campbell had introduced her to a woman called Olga, whom she became close friends with. Campbell even insisted that Donovan sleep with Olga.

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“All I felt was dirty … uneasy and used. I was so ashamed of the person I had become,” says Donovan.

Donovan eventually found out the reason for his avoidance after six long years; Campbell was actually invented by Olga.

The game was up when Donovan found a SIM card that was supposed to belong to Campbell in Olga’s room. When Olga was finally confronted, she admitted that the whole thing was a lie.

“In the end, Olga did confess that she was Campbell. I finally heard it from the devil’s mouth. But she never came close to explaining why she did it,” writes Donovan.

“How could it go on for so long. How could I be so stupid?” says Donovan.

“I spent six years of my life loving someone who never really existed, being ‘supported’ by a best friend who was deceiving me from the beginning, pulling all the strings. I know everyone gets their heart ripped out now and again but that… That just took the cake for me!”

Donovan, who had never had a boyfriend before, says it was something she had longed for.

“I believed everything and I was hopeful and … I was groomed very well,” says Donovan.

Donovan, who has starred in the stage production of The Sapphires, says relationships are on the backburner for now while she focuses her time and energy on her career.